Ivy
The server at the diner’s eyes go as wide as the plates in her hands when we push through the door.
Can't exactly blame her.
We washed up in the river before the fire went out, but "washed up" is kind of generous. My hair is a fucking mess, we're covered in scrapes and bruises, and my change of clothes from the duffel bag—a wrinkled thermal and joggers—are already damp again from the walk here because it started raining.
Just our luck.
Which is why we're laughing so hard we're fighting back tears. Valek slipped on an oil slick in the wet parking lot and the unnecessarily graceful alpha nearly fell on his ass.
He looks even worse than I do. He's wearing a plain black tee he pulled from an honest-to-gods emergency cache he'd stashed in a waterproof bag in the forest, not far from the river.
The bag also contained a knife, a burner phone, a thick roll of cash stuffed in a beer can, a first-aid kit, and what I'm fairly sure was yet another passport.
I didn't ask.
His combat pants are still shredded at both knees, and he's scratched up everywhere from taking the brunt of the fall. His hair is plastered all over his face, and through the damp white locks, his eyes are red-rimmed.
From being pepper sprayed.
The server, a middle-aged beta woman with her hair up in the tightest bun I've ever seen, stands frozen behind the host stand, a laminated menu clamped against her chest.
"Two, please," Valek says pleasantly.
She blinks, her eyes flicking between Valek's bloodshot eyes and the bite wound I left on his shoulder, the crescent edge of it visible where the scooped collar of his shirt doesn't fully cover it.
"Booth, if you have one," he adds with his best attempt at a normal smile. It does absolutely nothing to offset the blood crusted in his hairline.
I have to chomp on my lower lip hard to keep from losing it at the utterly horrified look on the server's face.
"I… sure," she squeaks, grabbing a second menu. "Follow me."
The diner is nearly empty at 4 AM, other than a trucker leaning on his forearms at the counter, chattering away to a bored server. A college-aged kid with headphones falling off his head is dead asleep in a window booth.
Neither looks up.
The waitress leads us to the darkest corner booth, which is exactly what I would have picked, and I'm sure Valek would too. She sets the menus down and clasps her hands together, gulping.
"Can I get you anything to drink?"
"Hot chocolate, please," I say, smiling. "And a sundae."
She writes it down without making eye contact, her pen moving so fast it tears through the pad.
"Tea, if you have it," Valek says. "Black."
"We have, um. BetaBlend?"
His expression doesn't change, but I feel the pain radiate off him through the bond. "That will be fine. Thank you."
She practically sprints away.
I slide into the booth and sink against the cracked vinyl, pulling my legs up onto the seat. Everything hurts. Even my palms hurt.
Worth it.
So fucking worth it.
Valek settles deeper into the booth, his long legs stretching under the table until his boot nudges mine.
"She thinks we're feral," I whisper.
"We are feral."
I laugh a little too loudly for the almost-empty diner. The trucker glances over with a bushy eyebrow arched all the way up into his receding hairline and I clamp my hand over my mouth.
Valek watches me with that faint curl at the corner of his lips.
I nudge his boot back. "Are you going to explain why you had a survival cache in the woods? With a burner phone?"
"One should always be prepared."
"For what? Nuclear war?"
"For anything." He folds his scratched-up hands on the table. "I have three others, by the way."
"Three?"
The waitress returns with my hot chocolate with tiny pink marshmallows and his tea bag floating sadly in a mug of water that's still clear, but clouded enough I think it's probably still boiling. She sets them down at arm's length.
"The sundae will be a few minutes," she manages.
Her eyes keep darting to the scratches on Valek's face, then to my nails, which are kind of dirty and… oh. Bloody.
"Oh, it's fine," I tell her with my very best smile.
She doesn't smile back, but when she gets back to the counter, one of the servers whispers something to her while staring wide-eyed at us, and they start looking at their phones. Judging from the now excited glances between us and their screens, they're figuring out who we are.
I wrap both hands around the mug and take a full, deep sip. Across the table, Valek dunks the BetaBlend bag between his thumb and forefinger, blowing a puff of air out through his lower lip to shift his damp hair out of his eyes.
"I still owe you dinner," he says.
"This counts."
"It doesn't, Ivy."
"It does. I'm the omega. I get to decide, remember? Besides, you owe me a conversation more than a dinner."
The humor drains from his face.
"I know," he mutters.
The sundae arrives and the server vanishes with a giddy sound the moment she sets the absurdly gigantic creation on the table between us. There's extra whipped cream—more whipped cream than ice cream, actually, which is just fine with me—and three cherries, all covered in rainbow sprinkles.
I almost think they forgot the spoons, but no. They're just buried under whipped cream.
They went all fucking out.
"I could get used to hockey mate privileges if it comes with extra dessert," I say, plucking a cherry off and eating it, watching him.
To my surprise, he isn't paying attention, even though I'm trying and probably failing to be sexy with the cherry.
He's focused on the spoon in his hand.
"Wraith reminds me of someone," he says quietly.
I go still. Oh fuck. Okay. Here it goes.
"A boy I knew. A long time ago, in a place that doesn't exist anymore." He turns the spoon between his fingers, watching the metal reflect the light above us. "His name was Ilya. He was enormous. Mute. Feral. Wore a gas mask because his face was…"
He pauses, then drops it.
My throat tightens.
"He was the gentlest person I've ever met, really. Everyone in that place was afraid of him. They called him a monster." Valek's jaw flexes. "He wasn't, of course. He would rescue creatures he'd discover around the grounds of the children's home."
I don't say a word.
"He had someone," he continues. "An omega. Cosima. Young, fierce, terrifying. She loathed me. The feeling was mutual." A ghost of warmth passes behind his eyes. "But I was fond of Ilya."
"What happened to them?"
Valek looks at the sundae.
"Another boy—Ivan—attacked Ilya for trying to protect a hatchling pigeon. Stabbed him in the ribs with a shiv."
My stomach plummets.
"I intervened," Valek says flatly. "Killed him."
A car passes on the road outside, headlights sweeping across the window and Valek's blank face before vanishing.
I reach across the table and rest my hand beside his.
His eyes flick to it, then meet mine again.
"I told you I'm a killer. Ivan wasn't the last."
He sets the spoon down carefully, right in the center of his napkin.
"There were three men on staff at the orphanage," Valek says. "Betas. They ran the dormitories."
His eyes don't leave mine, but something behind them has gone very far away.
"They had access to everything. Keys. Schedules. Which children slept where." His voice is level and detached, as if he's reading a police report about someone else, and his eyes are a dead gray. "They took advantage of that."
My hand is still resting beside his on the table.
He doesn't take it.
His thumb travels slowly across the inside of his opposite wrist, over the series of round cigarette burns there. I don't think he even realizes he's doing it.
But I see it.
And I understand, with a sickening clarity, that he's not just telling me what happened to the other children in that place.
The hot chocolate in my stomach settles more like mud and my vision blurs, but I blink hard and keep my eyes on him because he deserves it.
He breathes out through his nose.
"Ilya caught one dragging Cosima into a closet," Valek continues, flexing his jaw. "He went on a rampage. Beat him to death with his bare hands. The staff couldn't stop him."
The diner seems quieter than it was a minute ago. Suffocatingly quiet. It feels like I'm in a wind tunnel.
"Everyone was terrified of Ilya after that. More than before, anyway." Valek rolls his shoulders and folds his hands on the table. "And while the facility was in chaos dealing with the aftermath of a beta's brains splattered on the wall, I took care of the other two."
"How?" I ask.
"Rat poison." His lips thin. "In their drinks. It wasn't difficult. Nobody watches the kitchen during a lockdown. I sat in the dining hall and watched them drink it."
The cherry stem I didn't realize I'd chewed up sits in a tiny puddle of red syrup on my napkin. I stare at it, processing.
"Everyone assumed it was Ilya, of course," Valek says with a humorless exhale.
He takes a sip of his tea and grimaces with regret, setting the mug back down.
"The rampaging feral who'd already killed one of the staff.
Sneaking poison into drinks wasn't exactly his methodology, of course, but nobody cared about methodology.
They needed someone to blame, and Ilya was already the monster. "
"What happened to him?" I murmur. "And Cosima?"
Valek shrugs, but there's nothing indifferent about the gesture. "I don't know. He wasn't arrested. But the facility was shut down. We were all scattered." He picks up my gnawed cherry stem and twirls it around in his fingers. "Nothing good happened to either of them. I'm sure of that."
The sleeping college kid in the window booth shifts in his sleep, his headphones sliding off completely and hitting the table with a thunk. The trucker at the counter signals for a refill, making a smarmy joke at the server, and she fakes a laugh as she pours it.
Life goes on around us like it always does, indifferent and ordinary, while the alpha across from me recounts killing three times before he was old enough to shave.
"I need you to understand something," Valek says.
I meet his eyes.
"I don't believe what I did was wrong."
I let him finish, listening quietly.
"Ivan would have killed Ilya. The staff were…" He swallows, his voice roughening. "They were doing what they were doing, and no one was going to stop them. So I did."
"You were a child."
"I was old enough to know what I was doing. And I'd do it again. Every time. Without hesitation. And I would enjoy it. That's what I mean when I say I'm broken, Ivy. Not that I regret it, or that I carry guilt. I don't."
"Val—"
"I carry nothing, Ivy," he grits out, his lips curling around the words. "The place where something is supposed to be is just…" He taps the center of his chest with two fingers. "Empty."
I reach across the table and wrap my hands around his. Both of them. He doesn't pull away, but he doesn't curl his hand around mine, either.
“Don't,” he says hoarsely. "Whatever you're about to say—"
"I'm not going to tell you that you're secretly good and whole and just need the right person to fix you." I squeeze his hands. "That's not what I think."
He blinks.
"I think you did what you had to do to survive in a place where nobody else was going to save you.
" I press my thumbs into the backs of his hands, feeling the hard bones beneath.
"I think the empty space you're describing is what happens when you have to hollow yourself out just to stay alive long enough to get somewhere better. "
His jaw works as he watches me. Like his very life depends on this.
"I can't fill it," I tell him honestly. "I'm not going to tell you I can. I don't even think that's how it works."
Valek's eyes drop to our joined hands on the table, opening his mouth like he’s going to speak, but he closes it.
"But… maybe," I say quietly, "you don't have to feel so alone in it anymore."
He doesn't say anything.
I nudge the sundae toward him. "Now eat. I had to fight an alpha through the woods and a river, and I need dessert."
He stares at it, spacing out, and for a second, I’m not sure if he heard me.
Then his eyes lift to mine, and his lips twist into an unusually lopsided smile for him. He pushes his damp hair back from his face, shaking his head with a soft, surprised laugh that's unlike anything I've ever heard from him.
But he picks up his spoon.